Posted
by
Soulskillon Friday January 07, 2011 @11:36PM
from the what's-in-a-name dept.

An anonymous reader writes "TransGaming Cedega, the software forked from Wine that allows running Windows games under Linux, is being discontinued and replaced by GameTree Linux. This new software is also free. From the new website: 'TransGaming is pleased to announce the continued development of Cedega Technology under the GameTree Developer Program. This repositioning of the technology that powered the Cedega Gaming Service will allow the entire Linux community to gain free access going forward. Cedega is a cross-platform enablement technology that allows for Windows-native games to be executed on both the Linux desktop and embedded Linux platforms.'"

Yes, they're discontinuing the subscription plan and will be working with developers. Personally, I will continue to not buy anything from them as they don't seem to give much, if anything, back. That may have changed, but Codeweavers at least contributes most of their patches back to Wine.

Linux and other open source OS's appear to be needing a coordinated mass-users-attraction strategy, or group of strategies. I think too many a lot of us tend to be too idealistic of "what users should", and design things for that. Some observation and study of "what users do", frequently are very surprising and simple things, leading to only very slight adjustments of how something is presented or works, leading _huge_ numbers of people to change their behaviour. Companies make tiny adjustments in the co

I wonder if they're going to attempt to incorporate Wine code (assuming that licensing is made compatible)? The most recent versions of Wine are honestly just *better* at playing Windows games than Cedega is! Cedega had some advantages - convenience and commercial backing (CodeWeavers, the backing for Wine, usually seemed more interested in business apps). However, if you were willing to use Wine, you could actually game a lot better on it than on Cedega.

I'm reminded of EVE Online. They released a Linux version of their client, which was just a Windows version wrapped in Cedega. It was an immense download, and while it worked, the advanced graphics options were disabled - Cedega didn't support them. Most of us just continued using Wine, which aside from a few glitches and a more complicated setup was better in almost every way. CCP (makers of EVE) eventually discontinued the Linux client, saying that the game ran so well on Wine that there was no reason to pay Cedega for their version (the client was free to players; presumeably CCP was eating the cost of the Cedega license). At the time of discontinuation, Cedega still didn't support the advanced graphics options, but Wine did - and the glitches were all but gone.

I dont know if its changed but one thing Cedega was better at was support for copy protection used on games (the binary builds of Cedega include stuff licenced from the makers of those copy protection technologies)

IIRC Wine developers were reluctant to try to support these technologies because of concerns over the DMCA and lawsuits from DRM manufacturers.

I'm not sure whether those concerns were ever addressed, but Wine implements just enough of the Windows kernel APIs to make the more common DRM schemes work. I'm not sure how it fares on the newest stuff - though it works fine with Steam, which is about as much DRM as I'll tolerate on a game these days - but Securom and so forth were specifically made to work.

A Windows viruss will only shit the path configured into wine. If you set each application as a "bottle" using WINEPREFIX, It will only shit on that application installation. Only a Wine-aware Windows could potentielly damage files outside of it path. I doubt those exist. And even if Wine viruss exist, it would only shit on your home files. That a lot of IF, i would say it safe enough for games.

When you replace the entire executable the system tends to work pretty well. When you have to install a patch to a game it usually crashes. I no-CD all my games because having to have CDs is stupid, and because it does indeed make them work better in Wine. Notably to me, Simcity 4 is unplayable with DRM and works fine with No-CD. Right now I'm just hoping that Mechwarrior 4 Free will work properly one day... I was able to at least TRY to start the new, non-DRM version.

While many viruses can be executed by wine, most of the methods they use to insert themselves to run at bootup won't work on wine, and once the wineserver processes is terminated so is any of the malware.

As for having the root filesystem mapped, this is more for convenient but can (and usually should) be disabled, that said unless your running it as root it won't have access to anything outside your $HOME or/tmp, and even if it wanted to trash your homedir most malware is not wine aware and wouldn't know w

Given that "wine is not an emulator" but rather a library that mimics the Windows API and a loader that understands the Windows executable format, the code that is running is native code for your architecture and can potentially do anything a native application can assuming it's been written with that in mind. So you should expect a Windows application running under Wine to be able to do anything a native application could do running under the same user account.

Z drive to / can be removed you know? That's what I did... If I wanted something that was not under my home directory, which is the only place I allowed sometimes a wine drive to be attached (usually I only used dedicated folder(s) for wine drives though) I just symlinked the directory I wanted to use in wine under one of "wine drive" directories.

The Z drive was a surprise for me when I first time noticed it - wine did not always have that as default, it came couple years ago.

I tried to confirm this for a WWN story last year (year before?) and couldn't get a single virus to execute without failing. I tried to run 30 common viruses that had been suggested due to simple Windows requirements and not a single one caused damage. In all of the discussions regarding what should be done when viruses do start working no comment has been made about a single one running to a point where it would be a concern.

While Z: is accessible, it is no more writable to Wine as it is to any other application not running as root. That means just your home directory (granted, this can be dangerous) and tmp. But here's the thing: you can easily remove the Z: drive association in winecfg. Heck, there's even an option in the winetricks tool that lets you sandbox Wine like this.

CodeWeavers, the backing for Wine, usually seemed more interested in business apps

I'm not sure about their Linux version, but for the Mac they ship CrossOver and CrossOver Games, the latter (obviously) focussed more on gaming. I downloaded them when they issued the free download for a day because the CEO lost a bet. I don't use them anymore because the stock WINE is better (although the guy who was doing the Mac builds hasn't started on the 1.3 series yet and I'm too lazy to build them myself - last time I tried I eventually got something that worked, but didn't have OpenGL support...)

Yes, they're discontinuing the subscription plan and will be working with developers.

I thought that business plan was put in place years ago? Back when they started their Cider project, ignored Linux, but continued to collect subscription fees from those not wise enough to cancel their subscription.

Now be perfectly honest: Did you not buy from them because of philosophy, or because it cost money? Because despite what Linux users say about wanting things like gaming every time I see someone actually try to support Linux by catering to them, like Cedega or Loki, they end up going tits up. From where I have been sitting as an interested but on the sidelines observer, the only way to actually make money with Linux is to 1.-Sell support contracts to corps, ala Red Hat or 2.-Embed it into a device and sell that, ala every Router out there.

So why should all these companies that currently make Windows only consumer programs, like games and Photoshop and the nice picture app that came with the camera you gave grandma for Xmas, actually spend all that money to give Linux users product if they just don't buy squat? Because from where I'm sitting despite RMS saying it is about "free as in freedom" the only stuff I see popular on Linux is "free as in beer".

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC? Because hiring coders, constantly having to deal with the changes in the kernel, this I'm sure costs serious money. I've probably got at least a grand sunk into the software I use not counting the money I paid for Windows, and having that money sunk gives me motivation to learn to get the most out of it as well as that money motivating the developers to support me by writing more apps. Where is the motivation in Linux? Because you can't feed your family or pay your mortgage with pats on the back, and unless you are selling to corps that seems to me all you get from writing for Linux.

And while Wine is nice lets be honest: The average Joe isn't gonna jump through all those hoops trying to get the Windows software they need, which as I just pointed out has very little reason to come out natively on Linux, to run correctly. So like it or not you kinda need companies like Cedega that make it simple for the masses. So how is Linux ever gonna get the apps and the OOTB ease of use that the masses require, if one can't make a living supporting consumers on which is easily arguably the more difficult platform to write for?

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Full ticket price? NWN set me back $80, quake 3 set me back $50, quake 4 set me back $60. Baldurs gate 2 set me back $80, mostly older titles I know.

Humble indie bundle I donated $25 to.

Thing is, if the game company tells me (ala ID software) that they will eventually open source the game engine code but not the art so you will still pay for it, I'm a hell of a lot more likely to pay for their stuff.

Closed source has far too many drawbacks to be worthwhile to me on most occasions, if the game engine is open it means so long as the game is semi popular it will always work on my platform of choice.

Money is not the issue, the issue is people (or at least me) don't want to fork out $60 for a game where you are screwed when the engine breaks because of lack of updates. Or in a couple years when the multiplayer servers get killed and you can't play online.

I've dropped about a grand on wii games simply because I'm guaranteed they will continue to work so long as they have a wii. Only way to ensure it will continue to work on the pc is to have the engine source open and have people actually interested in using it.

Added bonus is you get free labour for the port, and code improvements over time which the company did not have to pay a cent for.

Game discs get scratched? Yes, I'm being facetious, but anything newer than PS1 games are hard to scratch. Keep games in their cases when you're not playing them, and don't use them as frisbees and they won't scratch. Also there are devices designed to fix scratches in discs:

Wii games are good for kids, but kids are very good at scratching games...Thankfully pirates come to the rescue and provide a very useful function that is missing from modern consoles - the ability to copy the media and play the copy, thus giving you the ability to make another copy when the first one becomes damaged.Years ago, when music came on cassettes it was standard practice to make a copy and play the copy.

Use a USB loader, problem solved. Sure they are commonly used by pirates, but they are also used for people keeping legitimate backups of their discs. The games have shorter load times from USB, and you don't have to switch discs. The list of games that can't be ran from USB is very small, if you have one of those, just leave that disc in there.

What are the drawbacks of closed source, specifically? You don't sound like you are actually a programmer, so I can't see OS giving you much, if any, benefit, except for the fact that it's likely to be free-as-in-beer.

If you are a programmer you can fix things, if you aren't then there is still a much wider range of people who can fix or improve things than with closed source. If a piece of software is really important to you, open source always gives you the opportunity to hire programmers to work on it for you.With closed source only the original vendor can fix anything for you, they might be unwilling or unable to do so. Quite often they will leave their old products to rot and ex

I believe this is one of the best formulas I have seen for paying developers for their time. The developers can charge for the product, then eventually when they believe sales have paid for their time already, open source the thing. Users with some money or urgency can encourage open source, just buying the products while it's new. Other users can get it when it becomes open, after X amount in sales is achieved. It's kind of similar to listener funded radio.

I still play quake (the first one) on a regular basis, i have an original cd with the data files but i haven't touched the original program binaries in years, i use quakeforge which runs nicely on my modern gentoo box. I play online with a handful of friends and we run our own server - most other quake 1 servers have long since been shut down.

I'm sure it will still be possible to play quake online for years to come... If we ever move over to ipv6 fully, how many old games will still be playable

If you really want to guarantee the availability of your old software, why don't you simply use an old computer, the exact same deal you are taking on with the Wii?

It is far harder to keep an old PCs in working conditions then a Wii or any other console for that matter, as with the Wii you have one single technology on which all games released for it will work, with PCs on the other side you have a ton of different and constantly changing technologies, OSs, soundcards, graphic cards, input devices, etc.

Have the PC of the right time for a game, but lack a 3Dfx card? Your favorite game might not run at all. Have an old PC, but miss a driver? Good look finding that. Ther

You can't just put together any old PC and then expect it to run ALL older software,

Yes, and thats exactly the problem. I can do that with a console. If I have a SNES I can say exactly what will work and what will not. With a PC it is a whole lot of "maybe" and suboptimal experiences (slow framerates, crashes, etc.). Also if I upgrade from SNES to N64. I still have my SNES around. If I upgrade from XP to Windows7, I no longer have a Windows XP PC around.

If you consider emulation then it's even less sensible. Today you emulate DOS with DOSBox, and decades from now you'll be able to emulate Windows XP/Vista/7,

The problem is that there are quite a few games released past-DOS but pre-XP. Yes, in 10 years that won't be an issue and can be solved wi

Bah you CAN do that with a PC, and at a hell of a lot cheaper and easier than those old consoles! Right now I have a closet FULL of dead consoles...two PS 1, a SNES, a Sega CD, A Genesis, and an original Xbox that works but it is too much of a PITA to mod the thing. Trying to find games and parts? A PITA unless I wwant to deal with the "fun" that is the ripoff land known as eBay.

Compare that to the PC side. I have a pair of 733MHz PCs that dual boot Win98 and WinXP. Cost? Nothing for the machines themselves

Just a reminder that Cedega is not a repackaging of Wine. It's a proprietary fork, from back before Wine went GPL (which it did precisely because Cedega - then WineX - felt entitled to use Wine as a solid base, but not so keen to contribute their improvements back to the community). For this reason, they cannot port code over from Wine, and has diverged a lot from it since.

I've bought Cedega back in the day when they were superior for Linux gaming, but abandoned them when their they started to noticeably lag behind vanilla Wine in most games that I care about. I haven't been running Linux-only for several years now and don't know how things are today, but from what I heard, the gap has only widened since, to the point that Wine is better for vast majority of games.

What I also recall is that one other reason why TransGaming was very much disliked is due to their "source available but don't dare use it" license. See, they used to provide the code to most of Cedega (IIRC the various DRM bits were excluded), and you could actually fetch it from a public CVS and build it yourself to get a working product for free. However, TransGaming has stated that the source code is made available for "community improvements", and not simply for people using it to get a free if not full-featured version for themselves (that despite the license for the code making no such distinctions!), and that, if source code access would be abused, they'd remove it completely. They especially hated how the various source-based distros (such as Gentoo) provided automated fetch-and-build scripts allowing users to get Cedega for free with a single invocation of the package manager. Given how the product itself was largely based on a community-developed, FOSS code base, it was seen as a particularly offensive slap in the face, more so than if the code was just closed.

I always maintain a dual-boot environment on my primary desktop, so that I can keep an eye on how things are in Linux land, and dabble with development for those things which work better on a Unix-like system (e.g. Common Lisp). But my primary desktop OS has been Windows for the last 4 years (after 2 years of Gentoo and then 2 more of Debian), simply because it works better for me.

FWIW, I've built a new box recently completely from scratch, and it looks like Linux is still struggling with hardware support t

Exactly. WiFi is a problem sound cards are a problem. firewire is a problem, dual display resolution can be a problem even ocassionally the boot loader. (read the sad stories of people that don't have a reinstall disk after their restore partition is reformatted.)

Oh yes, and if you want something to "make Wine simple", that's what CrossOver is for (and they have a special edition for games). Unlike Cedega, they do stay in sync with mainline Wine and contribute their fixes back there.

So answer honestly Linux guys, how much money have you spent on the software that is currently installed on your PC?

Quite a lot, if you total up my.wine directory. The problems is a catch 22, there's several things I miss to the point where I'd pay for it both when it comes to games and other software but there are no offerings. Of Linux natives I did buy World of Goo on Linux release day, beyond that I haven't found much worth buying to be honest. There hasn't been a mainstream game like "Neverwinter Nights" or "Unreal Tournament" once was released for Linux in years. Not even a sustained megahit like WoW that could ea

Well, it has been confirmed that there will be Steam (and thus Source) for Linux. Possibly some non-Source developers will use winelib to make their program run properly there and pick up some of that new market. But I doubt it.

No, Phoronix (the champion of verified news) has repeated a rumor from an equally unreliable source which was based on a few strings that showed a script had a case for linux - as if that couldn't just mean it was a standard cross platform script, no cleary this is rock solid proof that Steam is coming to Linux. They've also later denied that any such thing is in the works.

I thought Valve explicitly confirmed that there won't be a Steam for Linux, and that before the news it was just Phoronix speculating there may be one? Or has that news changed now and has Valve started making a Linux port after all?

I think there are enough people starting to move to Linux (or there was enough people moving that way when Win Vista came out) that these people didn't care about the whole open source / closed source debate. I've wanted to move to linux completely, and have finally done so. Ubuntu 10.10 has made it very easy. I still have issues setting up some games and apps in WINE (Quicken didn't load properly, PopCap games through Steam aren't working for me and I still can't tell if I'm getting full use of my graph

I use GNU/Linux for everything except gaming. Pay developers for the applications you use. Offer donations for bug bounties and above all be polite and grateful when something new turns up. Even a token amount is welcome and helps to recover the cost of bandwidth and that makes developers happy.
Until GNU/linux reaches a sizable amount of users.
Remember a dollar spent is a vote cast for better software.

Because despite what Linux users say about wanting things like gaming every time I see someone actually try to support Linux by catering to them, like Cedega or Loki, they end up going tits up.

GNU/linux users paid more individually then both Mac users and windows users for the humble indie bundle 1 and 2 (which included the games from bundle 1 as well) and they were about 1/4 to 1/5 of paying costumers. Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

Did you read the post GP was responding to? The point was not that Linux users will be forever generous. The example was provided as evidence against the idea that GNU/Linux users are unwilling to pay for what they want. In fact (making the same observation that you did), their desire to have more games has inspired them to pay _more_ than they might otherwise do. GP's point was that GNU/Linux users do want games, and that they've showed us so. That point stands.

Almost all the software on my PC was Free except Nero CD, for which I paid twenty+ten bucks (3.0 + 4.0 upgrade, not that 3.0 was failing to meet my needs at the time.) And it's not like it's not easily downloaded, either; there's even a keygen. I ran a downloaded copy with generated key for a while until I proved to myself that Nero was as stable as the PC version, which for the record didn't happen until version 3 (2 was the original Linux release.) So basically, just like Windows!

Wait, people even still use Nero, much less pay for it?!? Wow... last I checked (admittedly years ago) K3B was strictly better, and included with KDE for free. You can of course install it separately too, though it'll need QT and some other KDE dependencies.

Actually I supported them for quiet some time and did buy a couple Loki games before they died. With Cedega, It was clear that people would only vote on the latest great games, which was great, but it was always a moving focus in my opinion and seems like a bad way to go unless you had tons to developers. Then it seemed like the subscriber community would berate anyone that voted for stuff like "work on old games", so I stop supporting them, and left the "ooo shiny people" to the fruits of their labors.

Loki went under because they suck at business, basically. They ported games long after they were released, published them on CDs (which retailers basically wouldn't carry), and didn't advertise. Even if you wanted to buy a Linux port of a year-old game (and hadn't already bought the

Windows XP was released in 2001. Try running modern Linux programs on distros from 2001 and tell me that it's easier than Windows XP. The dependency issue is really a non-issue: just include the DLLs in the app directory and you are done. If you want to make it complicated, you can, but you don't have to. It generally just works. Again, tell me that's harder than autotooling a project and having it correctly build and install on even modern Linux distros. I've made software for both Windows and Linux

I don't see how any of what you said negates my point. Software from today works on Windows released over 9 years ago. Software from today DOES NOT WORK on Linux released 9 years ago, let alone 5. Most software from XP works on Vista and 7. A lot of software on Linux from the mid-2000s will not work on modern Linux without a recompile or hunting down ancient versions of libraries.

Sure, MSI was missing early on. There are and were other ways to install software. The dependency issues are orthogonal to M

Some linux software written today would work on a 2000 linux distro, and some windows software written today does not work on xp.Most linux software is distributed as source, so a recompile is not a problem. I still run xv every day on my modern linux machines for viewing images, xv was written in 1994.If you really must run old precompiled software that depends on old libraries you can bundle those libraries in with the software - like many windows apps do.

Remove all Windows users who haven't paid for anything, and how many are left? 100% of Windows users are not within US borders, but mostly in the rest of the world, where the word piracy doesn't mean much, it just means free. Microsoft created Starter Edition just because of this issue. Many, many users buying cheaper computers without the Windows costs, factory preinstalled with Linux, just because of costs. Most of those were formatting the PC with XP when they got it, but some kept Linux on, plus all

"the nice picture app that came with the camera you gave grandma for Xmas"

Aside from the fact that most software bundled with devices is pretty crap, the answer is because the company selling the camera wants to sell cameras, the software is just a freebie to sweeten the hardware. Adding linux software in the same package, or even just claiming linux compatibility on the packaging will at best increase sales and at worst do nothing at all.

If you look at the recent sales of the humble indie bundle, when given a choice linux users on average are willing to pay more and there is qui

Selling support contracts won't work out for you any better than selling games would if you keep the same mindset that's failed so many 'Linux' companies...

RedHat said it best, there's about 1/10th as much money to be made in Open Source as their is in proprietary software. If you go in charging the same prices as Microsoft, and have as much expensive overhead that you can't cut out, you're not going to make it, with support contracts or anything else.

I can't answer for the comment you replied to, but I've bought quite a bit of software. Even though I can legally download for free (no-cost) my OS i've bought it before to get money back to developers. I can look on my shelf and easily count the the cases of over a couple dozen games I've bought. Given the recent trend of download only games by Indy developers I suspect I've bought another couple dozen games that have no cases. For both the Humble Bundles, I beat the average price several times over.

It's not exactly that "Codeweavers at least contributes most of their patches back to Wine", it's that Codeweavers are entirely behind Wine, employing Alexandre Julliard and most of the important devs of Wine, hosting winehq.org etc. The proprietary parts of CXO/CXG are mostly related to ease of use, MacOS ports, copy protection and support. And Codeweavers is really a cool company with excellent (if a bit crazy) communication, friendly behavior towards their customers, etc.I own and pay updates for CXO Pro (thus having access to Crossover Office AND Crossover games for about $30/year, and often less due to their occasional great promotions), and it's really worth every penny.I just bought a lot of games on Steam/GOG during the holiday sales, and I've been really astonished at the number of games that run more or less flawlessly on CXG. Basically almost everything I bought runs, including Company of Heroes, Left4Dead 1/2, all the Half-Life, the Flatouts, Civilization IV and expansions, S.T.A.L.K.E.R.... Some actually run that are indicated by GOG as not running on Win7 (http://www.gog.com/en/mix/games_that_are_not_windows_7_compatibile_yet)... I get better compatibility for Windows games on Linux than on Win7, how ironic is that ?

I don't know what this new thing from Cedega will give, but I for sure will stay a customer at Codeweavers as long as they keep their ways, and I don't see that changing in the foreseeable future. Long life Codeweavers !

A repositioning is the silver bullet that solves all of your problems. For what i gather, if a company has no clue, they will reposition themselves hoping they end up doing something that turns a profit. If it doesn't work, lathe, rinse, repeat. Of course a better strategy would be to try to figure out the '2. ???' before '3. profit!'. But competence is a rare beast.

TransGaming did some really nasty things back in the days - after all, it was so bad that the WINE devs decided the best thing to do was relicense WINE from BSD to LGPL. While TransGaming is legally in the right since they forked the code prior to the license switch, what they did still doesn't sit well.

Why support them when you can support the WINE guys by buying CodeWeaver's Crossover [codeweavers.com] product? At least CodeWeavers directly supports WINE, and all the patches CodeWeavers make to support new games and apps make it back into WINE for everyone to enjoy?

Technically speaking, TransGaming could very well not be "in the right" since the copyright holders also have the right to revoke previously granted licenses. This is a common misconception that I believe needs to be addressed as it's too widespread among developers (another example where this mistake manifests itself is in OpenSSH).

I don't know where you got that idea. Previously granted licenses operate under the license terms that applied at the time that they were granted. The copyright holder can change the terms for future licenses, but not for already granted licenses.

If the earlier license included a time limit or a revocation clause, then that could apply. But you can't retroactively and unilaterally change the terms of an already issued license.

Copyright owners can only revoke a license as stipulated by the terms of the license.
Basically if a licensee breaks the terms of the license, then the licensor can revoke the license.Some licenses like the GPL contain terms that automatically revoke the license when terms are broken.
TransGaming is legally "in the right", since the BSD license basically means "Do whatever you want with the code, even close it up and sell it, just leave the license header in the sources".That may not have been what the Wine

Of course, it is not like CodeWeavers is rolling in cash, but Cedega took a product and ran it straight into the ground, hurting the Linux community with it. If CodeWeavers had had that support (and been around) way back then, we would be MUCH further along in making Windows an annoying legacy performance problem.

Thankfully, the web has places like Mozilla and Wikipedia that have had total support both in terms of community and financial health. Without their work, the web would be MUCH worse off today.

If they're going to give it away free, why not simply contribute anything they have which is still of value back to the mainline wine codebase....Mainline wine is already way ahead in many areas, so it makes sense for development to continue here rather than on cedega's old fork.

I thought it would be a name change at first until I read the "free" bit and also thought so why not simply just support wine? Too many FOSS projects suffer from groups failing to pool resources for no (good) reason I can see. I've noticed it a lot in terms of photo and graphics design programmes. If people got together and combined forces then it would be win win IMO since the product would become more successful and refined for it and due to that stand its ground more effectively against the real oppositi

Wrong. The problem is obvious and actually relevant. In fact, it can be explained with a single line:Someone, for whatever reason, has an exe file they need to run for whatever reason.

Just because YOU don't have a reason to use it doesn't mean other's don't. Plenty of people do. I enjoy my never-released-on-non-Windows-platforms games very much thanks to Wine. Oh, and the occasional bit of incompatible software that others send me, or that I find and want to try out.